Dream Tropes Wiki/And Knowing Is Half the Battle
The episode of your cartoon series is over already, and the kids haven't yet had An Aesop or a science lesson? Well, we can't have that! This trope is the practice of encapsulating the moral of the story in The Tag. It often has No Fourth Wall, and has the characters of the show directly lecture to the audience. It allows a show that went 22 minutes wantonly breaking stuff to get that coveted "E/I" rating, by telling the kids not to eat the pretty candies in the medicine cabinet. Most times, the moral laid out in The Tag is a summation of what should have been learned from the story, encapsulated in an Anvilicious manner. Other times, it's just a generic safety tip added to an otherwise purely entertaining episode. A type of Public Service Announcement or PSA, which often contains these when it uses characters from the show in the same timeslot. Sometimes it wasn't even a moral lesson, but a science fact related to the Sci-Fi setting. The first season of seaQuest DSV had real life ocean expert Robert Ballard from the Woods-Hole Oceanographic Institute give a one minute lecture on the science of the episode next to the credits; this segment vanished in the second season. Rankin/Bass Productions Sci-Fi cartoon SilverHawks had something about the planets framed as a lesson to the crew's Plucky Comic Relief / Robot Monkey. A variant on this could be seen in the short segments in prime-time that recommended the viewer to consult his local library for selected books related to the preceding program. Though this was most commonly seen in The '80s (often as a near-textbook PSA separated from the climax of the actual story by local station commercials), it also appeared in The '70s in police documentaries as a way to end the program with lessons for drivers. In The '80s and The '90s, it became something of an Enforced Trope, as FCC regulations required a certain amount of "educational" content in children's programming, and this became a way to make the actual show "educational." It's not quite a Dead Horse Trope or a Discredited Trope yet, though. And, as long as cartoons need E/I ratings or family shows need approval from Moral Guardians, someone will play this trope straight. Subverted in shows where We Haven't Learned Anything, period, and the characters remark on it. This trope does not refer to knowing a specific strategy that makes it easier to defeat a boss. Examples Western Animation * The PBS Kids PSA Series which lasted from 2004-2006, which was endorsed by the National Child Safety Council and the Character Counts! Coalition, and featured (mostly the animated) PBS Kids characters teaching a real-life lesson to kids. (For example: Matthias from Redwall giving a kid a lecture on what to do if there's a house fire, Digit from Cyberchase telling kids about swimming safety and how you should always have an adult around, Angelina Ballerina telling a kid not to run away from home, etc. etc.) Category:Tropes